Great Throughts Treasury

"There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life."

"There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more."

"There is no reason why a king should be rich or a rich man should be a king, no reason at all."

"There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it."

"There is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter."

"There is no such thing as being good to your wife."

"There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence."

"There never will be anything more interesting than that American Civil War."

"There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing."

"There was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first World War. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second World War, and in between there was the Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War."

"They wanted to know how I succeeded in getting so much publicity, I said by having a small audience, I said if you have a big audience you have no publicity, this did seem to worry them and naturally it would worry them they wanted the publicity and the big audience, and really to have the biggest publicity you have to have a small one, yes all right the biggest publicity comes from the realest poetry and the realest poetry has a small audience not a big one, but it is really exciting and therefore it has the biggest publicity, all right that is it."

"There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is."

"They were regular in being gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, they learned many little things that are things in being gay, they were gay every day, they were regular, they were gay, they were gay the same length of time every day, they were gay, they were quite regularly gay."

"Think of anything, of cowboys, of movies, of detective stories, of anybody who goes anywhere or stays at home and is an American and you will realize that it is something strictly American to conceive a space that is filled with moving."

"This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition."

"Think of the Bible think of Homer think of Shakespeare and think of me."

"This is the place of places and it is here."

"To know to know to love her so. Four saints prepare for saints."

"To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare."

"To know what one knows is frightening to live what one lives is soothing and though everybody likes to be frightened what they really have to have is soothing"

"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."

"To a specialist his specialty is the whole of everything and if his specialty is in good order and it generally is then everything must be succeeding."

"To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day. To be regularly gay was to end every day at the same time after they had been regularly gay. They were regularly gay. They were gay every day. They ended every day in the same way, at the same time, and they had been every day regularly gay."

"Veterans feel disappointed, not about the 1914-1918 war but about this war. They liked that war, it was a nice war, a real war a regular war, a commenced war and an ended war. It was a war, and veterans like a war to be a war. They do."

"Understanding and believing are not the same thing."

"Very likely education does not make very much difference."

"Wake a question. Eat an instant, answer."

"War is more like a novel than it is like real life and that is its eternal fascination. It is a thing based on reality but invented, it is a dream made real, all the things that make a novel but not really life."

"War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost."

"We are always the same age inside."

"We talked about and that has always been a puzzle to me why American men think that success is everything when they know that eighty percent of them are not going to succeed more than to just keep going and why if they are not why do they not keep on being interested in the things that interested them when they were college men and why American men different from English men do not get more interesting as they get older."

"What is a sentence. A sentence is a duplicate. An exact duplicate is depreciated. Why is a duplicated sentence not depreciated. Because it is a witness. No witnesses are without value."

"What is a sentence. A sentence is left to be alright and therefor (sic) they are barely here."

"What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage."

"What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country."

"When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream."

"When I said. "A rose is a rose is a rose." And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun."

"What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there."

"When there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war."

"When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that."

"When in a museum, walk slowly but keep walking."

"When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing."

"Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen was something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting. One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine."

"Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?"

"When is there some discharge when. There never is."

"You are all a lost generation."

"Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics."

"You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!"

"Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing."

"You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle."